If you were expecting some kind of sun sign nonsense, forget about it. This is real astrology for the real world. If it's real astrology for yourself that you want, you can get it by phone or in print. And if you need help deciphering the astrological glyphs in the graphics accompanying this article, see Astroglyphs: Astrological Symbols Guide. Please note: this forecast is expressed in terms of Universal Time (UT).
Forecast for tomorrow: a few sprinkles of genius with a chance of doom.
-- Baby Stewie
 

March was leftovers, carry-throughs from February and before. April, by contrast, makes its mark: this month is the start of something big, putting its stamp on themes that carry throughout the year.

Part of this is the April 24 Mars-Jupiter opposition, which is within a few degrees of exact alignment from mid-month on into May: fiery explosions, fierce fights, last stands and desperate measures, all coming just as Mars passes its waning square (90° arc) to the Sun as seen from Earth, ending the Red Planet's close approach to our home world. As I foretold, this close approach phase (which began in September 2007) has timed "a period of elevated tension and conflict, the kind of atmosphere that cultivates inflamed passions, hot tempers and rash, even violent action - of the criminal and military type, even. (Look at the Turkish attacks on northern Iraq, the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, etc.) Apart from the direct impact of the fires, clashes, crashes and explosions that are par for the course under this sort of Mars close pass, some such incidents can raise the possibility of a disruption in the oil and natural gas supply chain - which in turn can shock the financial markets and put investors and institutions in a mad dash for the exits." Having seen what has happened - most recently China's brutal repression in Tibet, the Turkish invasions of Kurdish Iraq and the civil war between Sadr's Mehdi Army and the Baghdad government - we know what will happen.

Another part of the story this month is the big planet (Jupiter and Saturn) stations of May, which are within a degree or two of exact throughout April; not to mention April's own Pluto retrograde station. The Pluto station is exact on April 2, but it's been within the degree of the station point since early March, and doesn't move off that spot until it retrogrades back into Sagittarius in mid-June. Notice the ties to May and June: the first SuperMoon months of the year. April is the part of the 2008 time stream where we come into the white water, so to speak. So in addition to the latest manifestations of the perfect storm in the global financial system, we know that the severe weather and seismic season is just around the corner. We'll see more of the former this month, but the latter really picks up in May and June.

April 2 (the Pluto station) and 10 (the Sun-Jupiter square) are peak stress points for the financial system, but don't make a fetish of exact dates. There are plenty of additional triggers this month, and any one could push things to the tipping point. For example, there's the Mercury-Sun conjunction on the 16th. And then there's Neptune's alignment with the Moon's north node, which is exact on April 28 or May 4 (depending on whether you use the true node or mean node, respectively). In either case, the Neptune alignment with the Moon's nodal axis is exact to within a few degrees throughout April and May. I've already pointed out how this ties into the eclipses of February past and August to come, and how these eclipse-Neptune connections mean "a loss of confidence, the money's gone, misplaced faith, theft and deception (including self-deception), the Emperor has no clothes."

This whole thing is so precarious that the next crisis could happen just about any day this month, and the last is far off into the future. There won't be a sudden collapse this month or next - just the latest crisis, followed by an intervention that fools only those desperate to believe that the "Wise Men" really know what they're doing, that it'll all turn out okay as soon as we get past the current mess.

I've dealt with the background in some detail already. But to summarize, the entire global financial system - not just the dollar, not just the US - is such a house of cards that the much vaunted interventions of the US Federal Reserve and other central banks only amount to postponements of a collapse not seen in generations. The fiat currency system itself is the problem, so injecting more fiat currency into the system will solve nothing. It's as if the patient is suffering from a systemic sepsis of the blood, and the surgeons are only sewing up each individual hemorrhage that develops. They're fixing nothing; the poison is spreading. The very bankers and politicians the world looks to to fix this mess are just the latest in a long line who created and sustain it. They can't fix the problem, because they are the problem. The fix is a whole new financial order, and that's the last thing they want because it will take away their license to steal. But as I've said, it's coming. It will take some years to get from here to there, but it'll happen.

How long it will take the next generation of "smartest guys in the room" to corrupt the new order into the latest system of theft and enslavement remains to be seen. History shows that we go from order to disorder and back to order again, but we never stay too long in a well-ordered state. Entropy is always waiting just around the next bend. My guess is that the state of order we reach over the next dozen years or so (as we approach the 2020 Jupiter-Saturn conjunction) might end up lasting not long past the 2080 conjunction of those two planets and Uranus, opposing Neptune.

But in the short term, to get through this, you know what to do. (To what I've already written, I should add that a pantry well-stocked with non-perishables and a fat roll of twenties to get you through transitional phases wouldn't be such a bad idea.) I'm not expecting some sort of Mad Max Apocalypse, mind you. Just a bit of disorder here and there. And not so much this year, not in the so-called First World countries. (It's already here in a lot of Third World countries though.)

The storms raging through civilization aside, there are other storms loose in the world this month; the kind that surge through the atmosphere, oceans and crust of our home planet. The really big disturbances are waiting just around the corner with the SuperMoons in May and June, but that doesn't mean April will be a total sleeper. Look for severe storms with high winds and heavy precipitation as well as moderate to severe seismic activity (magnitude 5+ earthquakes and volcanic activity) around April 3-11 (the lunar equatorial crossing on the 4th, followed by the new moon on the 6th, lunar perigee on the 7th and the Moon's north declination peak on the 10th. A similar batch of disturbances builds up from the 16th through the 25th, associated with the lunar equatorial crossing on the 17th, full moon on the 20th, and the Moon's south declination extreme on the 24th.

SPECIAL FEATURE: This month's birthdays of the famous and infamous (with astrological birth charts)